


Prelude to an Empty Sky

by Sintari (OriginalSintari)



Category: Captain America (Movies), Marvel Cinematic Universe, The Avengers (Marvel Movies)
Genre: Angst, First Time, M/M, Mutual Masturbation, Smut, World War II
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-12-28
Updated: 2018-12-28
Packaged: 2019-09-29 06:15:56
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,820
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/17198081
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/OriginalSintari/pseuds/Sintari
Summary: Steve & Bucky find themselves protecting a band of refugees in a French forest. In wartime, sometimes one night is all you can ask for.





	Prelude to an Empty Sky

**Author's Note:**

  * For [myrafur](https://archiveofourown.org/users/myrafur/gifts).



> Written for the inimitable [Myrafur](https://archiveofourown.org/users/myrafur) on her prompt "stolen wool." The stolen wool is in there - I just hope you can find it.

“You kiss your… well, never mind you kiss nobody with that mouth. I’ve just never heard you cuss like that before.” The falling dark didn’t hide the amused quirk of Bucky’s eyebrows.

Steve shot him a glare. They’d stepped far enough away from the shivering huddle of travelers that he hoped they couldn’t read his concern in the set of his shoulders. Sign language and his and Bucky’s fragmented command of French (Steve’s learned at a desk, Bucky’s in a cathouse) had told them the all too familiar story of a burned village and flight into the night. 

“Fritz stole all their supplies and their winter clothes. It’s supposed to freeze tonight.” More pacing. “These people could die. There are kids, Buck.” 

Bucky reached up and gave his own pack a pat. “Relax, we’ll figure something out.” 

Steve was pacing a small circle. “The reason we’re out here in the first place is that there are no towns. The Colonel called this the ‘Thousand Acre Woods,’ not the ‘Thousand Acre Woods and a Hotel.’” 

The leader of the refugee band was looking in their direction now with wary eyes. Just to calm him, Steve caught the guy’s eye and gave him his 40-watt Captain America smile and a stage wave. Even bone weary as they all were, two of the younger girls in the ragtag group jostled each other and giggled.

“We could keep those two warm,” Bucky suggested with a jerk of his head. His eyes are steady on Steve’s. Steve breaks the contact first. 

“You’re not helping.” 

Bucky winked at one of the daughters, who now curled a twist of hair around one finger. Mother Mary, girls and Bucky were just the same whether it was at a dance back in Brooklyn or in a freezing French forest in the middle of a war zone. 

“I’ll help her-“ 

“Still not helping.” 

Steve snuck a look at Bucky’s profile. He could never imagine anyone more beautiful, there in the magic hour. With a smile on his lips for somebody else.

“We’ll have to risk a fire,” Steve’s breath bloomed with steam. “And that means we keep a watch all night.” 

“I’ll watch h-“

“Nope.” 

Bucky nudged him then. That full body, chest bumping impact Steve had grown to expect since he’d come into his new size. Back home, Bucky protected him like he had a glass jaw. But now, Steve frequently felt the bump of a stiff shoulder or too-hard push. Like Bucky was testing him. How he’d react. Seeing if his new body would hold up. Or maybe if he’d fight back. 

Steve honestly didn’t know what would happen the day he decided to push back. So he ignored Bucky, then, like he ignored all the other physical jibes. 

“Come on. Let’s get these folks settled.” 

Running into the band of refugees had already set them behind on their two-man mission to dynamite a suspected Hydra weapons cache. The place was supposed to be a mere dugout, and guarded only by forest camouflage, but their intel and been wrong before. They could truly be alone here in the Thousand Acre Woods, or their smoke could lead Jerry straight to them and their newly found little band of sitting ducks. It was going to be a long night. And a longer day tomorrow. 

Soon enough they had a fire going. Since they wouldn’t be sleeping anyway, Steve had distributed their own pallets and wool blankets to the group, who huddled under them gratefully. Despite Steve’s objections, Bucky had accompanied one of the girls to the nearby stream for water. When they were gone a suspiciously long time, the band’s leader had looked a question at Steve. 

Poor bastard, Steve thought. He has no way of knowing if he’s out of the frying pan with the Germans and into the fire with two scruffy American soldiers. But Bucky and the girl had returned quickly after. Bucky’s lips might have been puffy, the girl’s, too, but Steve tried not to piece those clues together in the firelight.

While Steve and Bucky kept watch at the north and south ends of the perimeter respectively, the refugees’ bed time rustles and whispers gradually quietened. Steve noted with some satisfaction the girl who’d gone into the woods with Bucky snored like a tufting machine. 

There’s a lot of time to think on watch. Like what’s going to happen to these people tomorrow? If he’d understood right, they’d been wandering like this for three days already, and here with winter just now settling in. They were the Americans. The good guys. The right thing to do would be to escort these people to the nearest town, heaven knows where that might be. But Steve knew the army, knew how that particular institution thought. It wouldn’t be worth a few lives in Uncle Sam’s eyes to abandon their mission that could save so many more. Yes, Steve’s weary mind finally decided, the most they could do would be to give these people one night of safety. Sometimes one night is all you can ask for. 

()()()()()

Hours have passed. All is quiet. Steve looks up to see Bucky’s eyes glinting with firelight. This time he doesn’t break eye contact. 

Steve swallows. He wants- He wants- It’s not something he can put into words. It’s the prickles that numbed his chest when he saw Bucky leading the girl by the hand back from the stream. It’s the way his heart pounds up into his ears. It’s the stirring in his wool uniform pants. 

The temperature is surely below freezing now. He can see his every breath in front of his face. But Bucky regards him levelly over the sleeping group, across the fire, and Steve has never felt hotter to the touch in his entire life. 

Bucky makes his way to Steve’s side of the camp. A flagrant breach of watch protocol. They stand side by side, both looking at their hands as they warm them by the fire. They’re not looking at each other now, and Steve fears the moment – whatever it is – is lost until Bucky whispers, “You cold?” 

Steve snatches his hands back from the flames. “Nah.” 

Bucky shoulder checks him. It’s only because he was halfway braced for it than Steve takes the impact without staggering back. Bucky punctuates the hit with, “You sure?” And he’s looking at Steve again, jawline limned by fire. 

Maybe it’s the questions. How Bucky’s acting like his caretaker, nurse, nanny. But Steve chooses this time, past midnight, below freezing, in a forest with bone-tired refugees sleeping at their feet to shove back. He’s not sure why he chooses now to do it. Or maybe he knows exactly why. Either way, he notes with satisfaction that Bucky does stagger. Has to take a few backward steps, in fact, to keep his feet.

“Why?” Steve asks. And his voice is unnaturally ragged. “What would you do if I was, Buck?”

Bucky wipes the back of his hand across his nose as if Steve had hit him. Sniffs so that his nostrils flare like a bull. They lock eyes again. There’s not a thing – not one of the refugees waking up, not Jerry sneaking up through the woods, not strafing fire from the sky – that could force Steve’s eyes away now. 

Bucky swallows hard before he says, “Warm you up.” 

And they’re on each other. Steve’s gloveless hands are half numb from the cold, shaking with want as he unbuttons Bucky. It’s a race, as Bucky does the same. The refugees sleep just feet away and Steve has to strangle a helpless laugh. If the bedraggled group they rescued a few hours ago could see him now, snaking his best friend’s cock out of his winter uniform trousers. Their heads are bent together, ear to ear, and the steam from their breath obscures the air. Bucky gets Steve’s own pants undone and lunges for his cock and it’s cold and then so, so hot and God help him he wants this.

When he regains his senses, Steve runs his thumb over Bucky’s head, feels the slick there, rubs it around with his thumb then wets his fingers with it. It’s unspoken that they don’t make a sound, but at that Bucky husks out a ragged breath. He thumbs the slit again. Steve always knew, like he knows his best friend’s voice or the curve of his lips, that Bucky would like this the same way he likes it.

Oh sweet mother- Bucky’s jerking him and he’s jerking Bucky and it’s only taken them a few heartbeats to find the same rhythm. He braces his wrist on Bucky’s shoulder, and Bucky reaches up to do the same. The bodies create a circle of heat in a freezing night. Steve is sure that steam is rising off them. Their foreheads touch now, and their breaths mingle and Steve’s most fevered Brooklyn wet dream’s got nothing on the sight of Buck’s big hand wrapped around his cock and stroking. 

He glances up and sees that Bucky’s bottom lip is bitten white. His best friend for the whole of his life’s breath is coming in little hitches now, and it’s sending Steve over the edge. He speeds up on Bucky, and Bucky speeds up on him and Steve can’t remember a time when he hasn’t wanted this. When Bucky comes on his hand, dripping down Steve’s knuckles, it’s sticky hot. And that sight is all it takes for Steve to follow. 

They’re still modulating their breathing when they step apart to button up. To keep himself from looking at Bucky, Steve sweeps the group sleeping by the fire and notes with satisfaction that they seemed to have slept through their… display. And oh God what have they done?

And here’s Bucky, already across the fire and resuming his post. Tomorrow the cold winter sun will rise, they’ll wish the refugees Godspeed, and their mission will continue. Steve will open his mouth to talk about it, then close it again. Bucky won’t attempt to knock him off balance, that day or the next or the day after that. Steve isn’t sure what he’d do if Bucky did. And twenty-four days later, Bucky will be dead.

That night will become a memory – the reason that Captain America, who can be excused for some of his old-timer ways – gets that thousand-yard stare every time the thermometer dips below freezing. 

Steve still wonders about that band of refugees. If the purse-lipped old woman with the head scarf and the French accent at Duane Reade may have once been the curly-haired girl who kissed Bucky by a stream on that long winter night. Or if their bones lay moldering somewhere in the Thousand Acre Woods. If that night had only been a reprieve for them in an inevitable march toward tragedy. Sometimes one night is all you can ask for.


End file.
